Jamaica’s mangrove forests are among its most valuable, and most threatened, natural assets. For more than two decades, Dr Camilo Trench has worked to protect what remains of them.

They protect the coastline from storms, filter water before it reaches the sea, and store carbon at a rate few other ecosystems can match. Long dismissed as wasteland, they are increasingly recognised as essential infrastructure in a country exposed to hurricanes, flooding, and rising sea levels.

Jamaica has only about 14,000 hectares of mangrove forest left, much of it under pressure from coastal development, pollution, and urban run-off. Replacing the services these forests provide, including storm protection, water filtration, and carbon sequestration, would cost millions of dollars to replicate artificially.

Few people in Jamaica know that value better than Dr Trench. For more than two decades, he has worked to protect what remains of the island’s mangrove forests, taking on a role that has made him one of the most consulted scientists in the field — a guardian of sorts for an ecosystem that spends most of its life unnoticed.

His interest in the natural world began in childhood. Growing up near wetlands in Jamaica, he spent his time exploring the outdoors, often accompanying his brother on fishing trips to Salem, St Ann.

“My father always encouraged me to go into the sciences,” he recalled. “But it was my uncle who sent me National Geographic magazines, that’s where my fascination with ecosystems really started.”

Trench holds a PhD in Marine Sciences from The University of the West Indies (UWI) and has played a supervisory or advisory role in the restoration or conservation of hundreds of hectares of Jamaica’s mangrove forests, as well as mangrove conservation work elsewhere in the Caribbean. As a lecturer at The UWI’s Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, he has published in peer-reviewed journals and authored Jamaica’s National Mangrove and Swamp Forest Management Plan. His research has been funded by international organisations, including the World Bank and The Nature Conservancy, totalling more than US$4 million in grants, including a World Bank study, ‘Forces of Nature: Assessment and Economic Valuation of Coastal Protection Services Provided by Mangroves in Jamaica’.

That work has taken on renewed significance this year. The International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem, also known as World Mangrove Day, falls on July 26, a reminder of how much is at stake for islands like Jamaica that depend on these forests for protection.

One of the clearest examples of Trench’s work is The Pinnacle, a luxury development under construction within an existing mangrove forest in Montego Bay, St James, where he was brought in as part of the site’s development survey team and identified potential ecological risks early on.

Mangrove seedlings thriving under nursery care at The Pinnacle.

“When I saw the plans, I knew we had to be proactive,” he said.

Trench has led a strategy to preserve 95 per cent of the existing mangroves on the site, creating controlled water access points and a nursery programme that grows on seedlings before they are planted across the wetland. Seedlings are collected in the summer, when mangroves flower and fruit, and kept in a nursery where they are monitored, pruned, and gradually acclimatised before being planted out. Mature mangroves are harder to move.

“If they’re over half a metre tall, their survival rate drops significantly,” he said, which is why his team focuses on younger seedlings instead.

Yangsen Li, chief executive officer of LCH Development, the developer of The Pinnacle, said the firm’s approach to the site was shaped by a broader view of what development owes the land it occupies.

“Responsibility to nature is a driving force behind The Pinnacle,” he said. “We deliberately chose one of the best in the world to help us execute that responsibility. Dr Trench was the clear choice.”

Trench said he hopes The Pinnacle will eventually achieve a net gain in mangrove coverage.

“We want to protect what’s here, and grow even more than we started with,” he said.

For him, the most significant outcome may not be measured in hectares.

“The most rewarding aspect of my work is seeing mangroves finally recognised for their ecological significance,” he said.